Archive for June, 2013

A colleague recently put me onto the notion of the ‘Power Distance Index’ or PDI. I immediately was intrigued as I thought this might help explain some of what I had experienced while working on an organizational transformation project in the Philippines the past 3 years. When I first started working with the organization, the project team that had been put together by the senior leaders would sit silently while visiting international consultants asked questions to prod feedback and input into the various tasks at hand. Why wouldn’t they talk? Was it English? Filipinos would joke about getting a ‘nosebleed’ if they had to speak too much English. Was it that they simply couldn’t think for themselves? I racked my brain endlessly thinking of ways to get the local team to think critically, voice their ideas, and participate in the development of the program.

Just over three years ago, I found myself in a developing country managing a project that would help about 350,000 poor people save money. The project was essentially an organizational transformation of a large microfinance institution. We’re winding the project down now and I’m reflecting on what we did well, not so well, or maybe not at all.

I often thought of my role as Project Manager like that of an air traffic controller. We had so many consultants on the project — from internal controls to financial risk management to marketing to human resources — I had to manage the runway and make sure there were no collisions in the comings and goings of the consultants or senior management. Not just physically, but emotionally. I spent a good bit of time that first year making sure that the work of each consultant would be seen as a success by the senior management and that they would embrace and implement the various recommendations. I made sure that everything was happening according to plan.
But there were a few line items on the project plan that just were not tangible to me…

After the Miami Heat won the 2012 NBA Championship, a Twitter exchange erupted between Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks; and Skip Bayless, sports journalist, TV personality and ESPN commentator. This led to a heated episode of ESPN’s First Take that went viral. Cuban contested that Bayless and other sportswriters only spoke in generalities. Whether Bayless was speaking of Lebron James’ “biggest collapse of a superstar that we’ve ever witnessed” or praising the Miami Heat by saying “Miami wanted it more than Oklahoma,” Bayless’ comments, in Cuban’s view, were too vague for anyone to question. Unfortunately, the issue of using vague generalities to describe a situation reaches far beyond the basketball court.

Melinda Gates’s describes the way we, in the nonprofit sector, usually evaluate the success of our programs by analyzing data at the end of the project, if at all, instead of using real-time data throughout implementation—a practice she likens to “bowling in the dark.” Like Skip Bayless, we can make all sorts of subjective conclusions around the efficacy of our work if we are not expected to offer factual evidence to support our claims. However, unlike sportscasting, the consequences of not using data in our work can be considerably more harmful.